It's a terrific story filled with a lovable cast and plenty of standout moments where the gameplay systems are used to elevate its narrative, held down by the horrifically paced game structure that is merely "some overly gamey rpg system bullshit" at the best of times, and feels like a tonally dissonant frustrating waste of time the worst of it.
A hypothetical primarily walking sim version of this game that cuts a majority of the sillier headspace content or heavily edits days 2/3 of it to be more in line with the actual meat of the game to make a tighter more focused experience could be something I recommend without reservation. Unfortunately it is not that, and we're left with a game that makes you spend half its playtime on mostly mediocre content to experience the extremely fulfilling real half.
A hypothetical primarily walking sim version of this game that cuts a majority of the sillier headspace content or heavily edits days 2/3 of it to be more in line with the actual meat of the game to make a tighter more focused experience could be something I recommend without reservation. Unfortunately it is not that, and we're left with a game that makes you spend half its playtime on mostly mediocre content to experience the extremely fulfilling real half.